The Rich Keep Getting Richer

Is anyone really surprised? Is it any wonder we face the economic crisis currently plaguing us? For decades big business has been gorging--at the expense of the rest of the world. And it is ending the same way it did in 1929. They've made their mammoth profits through speculation. As with all speculative bubbles: they burst. That means the rest of us who getting crumbs for so long, are now getting stuck with the bill. Because when the super rich get in trouble the government comes to their aide. The victims of big business' excesses get nothing but insults, as happened with all those innocent people who took out deceptive subprime loans. Much of the world's economic injustice can be attributed to the gap between the super rich and the great majority of the non-rich. And it is inequality that led the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, and our own revolution. And it will happen once again in this country. Meanwhile, there will be great hardship:

In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The group's share of the tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its share of income.

[...]The figures about the relative income and tax rates of the wealthiest Americans come as the presumptive presidential candidates are in a debate about taxes. Congress and the next president will have to decide whether to extend several Bush-era tax cuts, including the 2003 reduction in tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Experts said those tax cuts in particular are playing a major role in falling tax rates for the very wealthy.

[...]According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.